Gave the brand a second chance some years ago. Couldn't export my videos from the app, it always hanged. So I couldn't share footage. Apparently a common long standing problem on forums.
Woved to never buy anything from them again.
Yes, I've done the Garmin VIRB Edit thing, which is the very approach recommended by Jeff (NorCalCycling) in his tutorial videos on the subject. It feels like something out of 2005. It is incredibly labour-intensive and imprecise unless you're fortunate enough to be in relatively short criteriums where you've got the battery runtime to just record the whole race. Most real-world events and rides require one to turn the camera on and off at certain moments, which then requires _hours_ of stitching together clips and correlating them to GPS fixes from the head unit (in the FIT file), and quite imprecisely at that.
There has to be a more 2026 solution to this. All you need to do is correlate the footage to the FIT data points by timestamp, in the temporal domain.
If Garmin came out with one, it would absolutely annihilate this space. To the best of my knowledge, there is no competition that offers anything turn-key, though perhaps the best of my knowledge has not aged well and by now there is something. It's maddening.
Just don't buy DJI -- they absolutely want lock you in to their tools, parts are often not compatible even within DJI, require to create an online account, require an app (from a custom .apk on android) and in general have questionable privacy.
Of the open-source systems there's a new OpenIPC system with a most popular implementation of RunCam WifiLink 2 that supports onboard SD card recording [1] [2].
More proprietary (but still cross-compatible with others) is Walksnail Avatar V2 [3] with 32GB of internal storage.
For your case, you don't need a VRX (receiver), although you can totally give it your your buddies to see your race (with OSD) in real time. VRX can be built-in to goggles (if the same company), or as a separate module that connects to your preferred goggles over mini-HDMI, also with recording. [4] [5]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP7Ns7H9wvI&t=49s
[2] https://shop.runcam.com/action-camera-categorie/
[3] https://www.caddxfpv.com/products/walksnail-avatar-hd-kit-v2
[4] https://shop.runcam.com/runcam-wifilink-rx/
[5] https://www.caddxfpv.com/products/walksnail-avatar-fpv-vrx-o...
Of courses, for more advanced stuff you might want to provide the telemetry yourself (like the gopro doesn't know your wattage). But it does have much more than dji out of the box.
Been a while since I used it, but it will generate the overlays and you can sync it with your ride data (eg Strava or Apple Health in my case, but iirc it also supports Garmin Connect).
There are some capability differences between the mobile app and the Insta360 studio desktop app.
I'm pretty sure it handled multiple files, but in my case they were the chunks that the camera splits its recording into, which is a bit different than than having multiple clips as you described.
Judging by the paucity of software to do this, historically, it is not a straightforward problem, or all the devices involved don't generate all the data points required.
The real mess is when you have 26 clips from a long event to string together. It can easily take a day and a half to make a 3 minute montage out of that.
I did this with raw footage and a VESC speed controller dump to overlay a bunch of motor stats on a prior project, this was pre-AI and it was still only an afternoon project.
ffmpeg/image-magick do all the real heavy lifting out of the box.
Just prompting claude (probably I would start with Opus) "I would like a HUD display of the following metrics from my Fit file overlayed on these GoPro videos, and I'd like the videos stitched together (there are some gaps, I want seamless playback) it would probably do it in 30 minutes or less, and the majority of the time would probably be ffmpeg.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/10/oakley-meta-vanguard-rev...
I’ve had a few GoPros and a few GoPro 360s. I also had Roombas so you can blame me as the brand killer.
Apple somehow reigns supreme still. Anyone else?
The manufacturing isn’t usually the most valuable part of the value chain. E.g., Apple makes the most money when you sell you an iPhone, not their Chinese and Indian factory suppliers and assemblers.
GoPro isn’t failing because they’re an American brand. They’re failing because they’re mismanaged and they made a bunch of product mistakes.
If you want more examples I can give them to you: Google hardware/phones, HP, Dell, Sonos, Bose, Ubiquiti, Cisco, Nvidia, Qualcomm.
Most Japanese corporations still do a lot of their design work in Japan. Sony even does manufacturing of Raspberry Pi devices in Wales.
And of course, speaking of Sony, the money maker for that console is in software, and most of Sony’s studios are in Western countries like the US and Japan. The manufacture of the console is the lowest value part of the business.
Companies that have significant manufacturing and fabrication outside of China/Taiwan: Intel, IBM, GlobalFoundries, ON Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Whisker (Litter Robot), and a very large percentage of the automotive industry.
Large appliances brands have a heavy presence in the US, Canada, and Mexico, including LG, Samsung, Whirlpool, GE appliances, Speed Queen, SubZero/Wolf/Cove, BSH Home Appliances (Bosch/Thermador), Electrolux.
KitchenAid mixers, Vitamix, Viking Range, BlueStar.
Igloo coolers, All-Clad, Lodge, Post-It notes, Darn Tough Socks…
Some have held out. Speed Queen are still made in Wisconsin. I will be looking at them when I need to replace my laundry machines, which I expect in the next couple of years.
Not their entire product lineups, but still a good chunk of them, especially for heavier and physically larger appliances. Your future speed queen might be just as American as if you had bought a cheap GE.
I don’t know where it’s made (probably not the US) but Cuisinart still makes the classic heavy AF food processor, if you’re interested in that.
As a side note, I don’t find that heavy weight or an older design/more metal parts has that much to do with quality or longevity. A lot of old stuff was heavy because material science had fewer options to work with. A motor assembly being made of cast iron doesn’t make it magically last longer. For example, my KitchenAid stand mixer is definitely the newer kind that has plastic parts inside, but it has never needed service and has been getting regular use for a decade with no degradation. Believe it or not I even have a notoriously unreliable Samsung washer and dryer from 2012 that are still going with zero maintenance. It even has a stupid touch screen and, yep, that works flawlessly.
Maybe the bar is low to consider that impressive but I think the point is that a lot of things getting cost cut has been somewhat logical. I see new buy it for life toasters on the market like the Lotus brand selling for $350. I just replaced a $40 Cuisinart garbage toaster that lasted 3 years and died. Chinese off brands built to similar quality by the same factories without the western brand name cost about $20.
So, do the math on that. The Lotus toaster has to last somewhere between 25 and 50 years to reach cost break-even compared to a cheap toaster.
The same math maths for speed queen washers and dryers. They are a great kit but they cost 4x more than a normal washer and dryer. If you conservatively estimate that a cheap washer/dryer lasts 6 years, you’re at 24 years before that speed queen breaks even.
If we are going to combat the economic reality of numbers like these then we need to start taxing disposal.
A dead toaster is a minor inconvenience. You can go without toast for quite a while. and a toaster can be replaced at any department store. You can carry it home and plug it in. Or order one online and have it at your door the next day. They are cheap enough and unimportant enough that there's no real downside to making price the dominant consideration.
A dead washing machine is a bigger deal, especially if your household has a few kids. You can't go without doing the laundry for very long. Replacing a large appliance involves scheduling a delivery and possibly installation, and maybe the schedule is already full until next week and you'll have to take a day off work to be home for that. I'll pay quite a bit extra to avoid that any more often than necessary. And that doesn't consider the value of the daily satisfaction of using well made appliances. They feel solid, they work without glitches, they are quiet, they are consistent, you don't worry about them.
Even with a toaster some of that applies. I've had toasters that were a daily annoyance to use. They burnt the toast, or toasted unevenly, sometimes randomly, or if you were making a lot of toast the subsequent batches would come out differently from the first. It's worth something to have a toaster that just reliably makes toast, the same way, every day.
True. Virtually nothing is.
Though its probably worth noting that Apple's approach to China exists at a much more integrated and larger scale than your average US (or other western) electronics company and is more akin to a fully integrated partnership with various entities like Foxconn than the typical "let's offshore the manufacturing stage" that most other companies take.
One factor (mentioned at https://bsky.app/profile/rajakorman.bsky.social/post/3mqubnh... for instance) is Western distrust of the Chinese government and the regulatory barriers erected from both sides. TikTok's probably a good case study. There was a conspicuous lack of Chinese software companies having success in the Western consumer market before TikTok. Building TikTok involved creating a new product aimed at RoW which was separate from its original Chinese model, Douyin. And then after TikTok Western success was still elusive, to some extent, as the US government snatched away Bytedance's toy.
Though even beyond tech and other politically sensitive areas China's generally been pretty slow at generating RoW-consumer-facing products and brands. There's also the slightly remarkable fact that historically (and even to some extent still today) GUIs have been extremely, mysteriously hard for large companies worldwide to do well. The main exception have tended to either be called "Apple" or have dedicated themselves to copying Apple's homework: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288221 .
(I am not an expert on anyhthing.)
While GoPro is made in Thailand.
America is just where their marketing teams hang out...
Here's how it works for the non-Americans of us:
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.
Remembering this often-forgotten detail puts a lot of US culture and behaviour in perspective. Also let's not forget the Bellamy salute, in use for 50 years until 1942: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute
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1: and in congressional sessions, government meetings at local levels, and meetings held by many private organizations, according to Wikipedia
There most certainly is not. The pledge is common in schools but the Supreme Court has ruled no one is required to participate and cannot be punished for non-participation. Is it still weird? Sure. But it’s not required.
I always disliked the Pledge and began to strongly dislike it after moving away from the religion it tries to establish as the national religion, but I was keenly aware that picking this fight would cost me considerable political capital and chose not to.
How many schools still do it, though? Honestly you could tell me it was almost universal or very rare, and I'd have to believe you either way.
Of course, Canada was doing the freaking Lord's Prayer in schools until freaking 1988. I don't know about other countries, but wouldn't be surprised.
What sort of consequences? I'm guessing the US got rid of corporal punishment, and since it's optional, could they give like detention and stuff for it? Or is this more about being bullied/similar by peers?
Also the US did not get rid of corporal punishment entirely, the south still has it in some places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_...
At least in the US, teachers and administrators are given rather broad latitude to treat students differently, without requiring justification and very often based on their own personal biases and prejudices.
If one's ideals fall over so easily, what would happen in the event of an actual serious attack on those ideals?
So as individuals we choose to fly the flag a lot.
Which values? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." does not seem to be upheld very strongly in the USA.
What about women's rights and abortion upturned by the current government, why are Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality needed 50 years after Martin Luther King, what about thousands of people disappeared by Trump's ICE, what about the enormous wealth inequality where the wealthy seem to be a lot more 'equal' than the plebs, what about nobody being punished for the 2008 financial crisis or the Epstein events or the Jan 6th attempted coup? Or the unwillingness of so many people to wear masks during COVID out of respect for their fellow Americans?
How can you claim a "core kernel of universal shared values" without nation-wide universal health care, workers rights, liveable minimum wage, things that demonstrate a fundamental belief in equality and shared values??
But I'd say it's not "too much nationalism" rather the average american is defintiely more patriotic than an average european (who can then again be anyone from the UK to Poland to Moldova) but you get my point
It would be more correct to say that the average American values outward displays of nationalism more, and has a more negative perception of those who do not appreciate or want to participate in those displays than people in most other countries. And yes, they conflate this with 'patriotism'. However, this is almost completely performative and lacks real substance, as is proven by the typically far more selfish attitude towards their fellow citizens, and is exemplified by the constant historical failures to provide significant funding for projects designed to help rather than harm others.
Europeans and people from other countries around the world are often fiercely in love with their countries. They just tend not to love the idea of noisily jumping up to gaudily beat their own drum. So yes, the average American thinks they are more nationalistic, when in fact they are just more tribal and crude about their nationalism than what is typically found in other countries around the world. If only our nationalism were taken a bit more seriously than our affiliation with a sports team, which is in theory just for fun and entertainment, that would be an improvement.
> Europeans and people from other countries around the world are often fiercely in love with their countries.
I would also disagree with this, I think it's profoundly uncool to love your country in many parts of Europe—think the UK and especially Germany.
The Europeans that did actually fiercely love their country that I've met were all Poles or Serbs that were gaudily beating their own drum.
What problems do you think arise from nationalism in it's current form in the US?
See https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/02/17/what-makes-peo... and especially note that the US is one of the top countries for percentage of population with primarily negative views of their country, at 20%.
You're not wrong that the American public is largely out of touch with the fundamentals of a free society.
> I wonder where that comes from.
> Leadership
Democracy is great but that elected leaders seek reelection at the expense of the common folk isn't something new, those in power will naturally seek more power.
The problem is that Americans look at vulnerable people and billionaires like they individually deserved their fate. The cult of merit.
A defense plant probably has more outward signs of patriotism.
That said, this may have also been a photo op, and given the image is from texas, there are probably portraits of a dictator hanging around, too.
Of course now it's different, the flag is less common, to the point in my home province (Alberta) you see more Albertan flags than Canadian ones...
> similar to how dictators like to hang their portraits
Insane comparison as the idea of a free country is fundamentally different than the cult of personality that dictators create.
Outside of that the main people flying national flags are government institutions, who usually have it up right next to a European flag and a flag of the institution, like a local municipality.
The European flag is also plastered over billboards next to all kinds of EU-funded construction projects, of course, and is on literally every single Euro bill.
So no, someone's feelings about an institution are not inherently linked to the success of its empty propaganda campaigns.
Apple reigns supreme because of China - and the two are inextricably linked. China would not have its high-tech manufacturing prowess if it were not for Apple. The book Apple In China [1] highlights how millions of cheap laborers and the country's engineers took the lessons of working with Apple to solidify its edge in this space in a way nobody can catch up to today.
China took the long-term greedy approach to invest in the relationship. We see the US today taking equity stakes in Intel and trying to play catchup by using elements of the same playbook. The US's advantage remains in the more "intangible" side of the process: creativity, design, new tech. In a global economy with free trade, this is all fine. But China never "westernized" itself as was expected from the increase in global trade. Now the US is back pedaling, trying to jump start its manufacturing. It will take a long time...
The book is a good page-turning read. I recommend it.
That's because America ban anything that starts to compete, like Huawei or Chinese car companies
Largely because they've been producing in China for quite awhile. Now India too.
Their volumes are high enough that they will literally build an entire factory from scratch to produce a single product line, they are far enough up the luxury ladder that a few extra dollar in labour won't hurt them too badly, and the contracts with their suppliers are significant enough that they don't need the short supply lines of a Shenzhen and can just demand their suppliers Get It Done.
Having a domestic factory won't hurt Apple, and with an erratic President who'll flip on tariffs twice a week it's a sensible hedge against his inevitable next meltdown.
Action cameras sound like a tough business, since most of them are built to last ages, and they need to keep the vast majority of content creators happy trying to increase image quality in a small form factor.
Anyway, I bought the Insta360 Go Ultra I had my mind on from the start, which I'm still reasonably happy with.
Fyi: This is a lie, the youtubers are paid to tell you this.
It's factually correct and widely known that lots of tech "reviewers" get paid by the competition to shill products, was a whole scandal even with how Insta360 was caught telling reviewers not to mention their sponsorship. The contracts also often forbid them do do direct comparisons. Also funny how there will be a hundred identical reviews, as they all got the same script.
So, my statement is true. If you've watched a couple of videoes telling you to buy dji/insta360, it's very very likely you've been lied to.
So, ball is in your court.
The Insta360 has super annoying/intrusive software that always feels like it's trying to sell me something, but it's pretty excellent in terms of actual video quality.
I copy out the footage directly using a USB-C cable (wish it had USB 3.0), and do firmware updates by just dropping the update file into the microSD card.
It's friggin' fabulous that everything is doable without having to use an app. (Also the app takes up somewhere between 1-2GB of storage on my phone, and I don't have that kind of space.)
As soon as we hit deeper waters the capture button pressed itself down due the pressure and it wouldn’t come back up. That, unfortunately happened in a way that I couldn’t start a capture. Lost the entire thing, despite the camera being perfectly fine after we came back to surface.
Hated them ever since.
That said, GoPro is not the best for low light environments, and the battery is a bit temperature sensitive, both which can be an issue when diving.
I believe things eventually got sorted out for water use, but I was no longer a customer.
Was the GoPro you bought rated up to that depth or something? After a cursory look online, they're only rated down to 10m, which is about what I'd expect.
I thought they were meant to be really robust and hardy but it decided not to work when I needed it and now I don't really trust them tbh. It's sort of opposite of what the brand was leading me to believe.
Turns out it overheated 15 minutes into the drive, and corrupted all the footage from my whole ski trip.
I'm also still salty that they cancelled my favorite fast video editing software (can't remember the name).
This was 8 years ago.
The "problem" is that I don't use it that often. Most people do not need action footage regularly. It was more like a impulse/hobby buy rather than a need.
GoPro Labs works really well, https://gopro.com/en/us/info/gopro-labs
But it's a bit sad how long their expirements lives there before making it into the default firmware.
The first surprise was just shoddy electrical engineering: unlike any camera from a big-name manufacturer, they drain the batteries in storage, to the point where they're dead after 2-3 weeks. But that aside, image quality is just poor for the price. It's oversharpened and oversaturated to cover up deficiencies, and that may work for some YouTube videos, but it's a $400 device that's miles behind any $500 mirrorless.
So I get it that if really want to go snorkeling or mountain biking with a camera, this might be a good choice, but that's a tiny market, and for everything else, why would you buy it? If you want cell phone quality video, you can use your cell phone. If you want professional quality, you can spend the same amount of money on a mirrorless from Canon, Panasonic, Sony, or whatever.
You buy a GoPro to mount onto a dirt bike, or on your helmet during caving, or on a chest harness during a skydive, or on the front of your surfboard: all activities where a smartphone or a mirrorless would die on their first use.
GoPro isn't failing because the concept is wrong - the market is massive. GoPro is failing because its competitors started releasing clones which are both better and cheaper. They are the expensive premium brand in a market where buyers expect their product will need to be replaced when it inevitably can't handle the abuse anymore.
Okay, I definitely want a link for that one. That's either the most awesome hack or the biggest marketing lie ever.
smartvacuums.co.uk says a dehumidifier collects 10 - 20 litres of water a day. dehumidifier-rentals.co.uk says 8 - 20 litres a day for a domestic compressor type, or 0.5 - 10 litres per day for a small domestic type. upgradedhome.com says about 4 litres a day.
Sounds plausible for a mop water bucket to fill usefully full between, say, twice-weekly moppings.
it would be pretty impressive if its a marketing lie, as i've had the robot running for about a year and haven't had to refill the water tank. it's "just" a dehumidifier. i live in miami so plenty of moisture to go around.
The reality is that even in "action" situations - the situations where normal people want to capture memories of hiking, biking, boating, etc - normal cameras, including cell phones, are usually more than enough and GoPro somehow managers to be worse.
Just how many millions of people do those outdoors activities?
You can't survive selling solely to YouTubers, that's definitely true, but you don't need to. Just like tennis companies don't need to survive solely on selling to Grand Slam competitors. Plenty of people are willing to spend a few hundred bucks on their hobbies if it gives them nice pictures and videos for InstaSnapBookTok and to show off at parties.
And no, normal cameras and smartphones are not enough. They'll do for a casual hike, but they will not survive being attached to a mountain bike going downhill and being shaken to bits. I found out the hard way, it is how I killed my first smartphone. If you disagree: why not try it out yourself with a $1500 flagship phone and report back how it went?
Many, but that's irrelevant. There are hundreds of thousand of bicycles in my city, and very, very of them have cameras. That's kinda the point: what you're selling is the dream of being a YouTube influencer, pretty much. Otherwise, there's little value to having a big library of videos from every ride you've taken, especially since let's face it, most people ride the same routes / trails most of the time.
Now, the dream of being an influencer may be a strong selling point, but you can only do it once. People are not gonna keep upgrading.
I don't think people are cross-shopping action cameras and mirrorless cameras. Either you want a wearable light-weight shockproof, waterproof camera or not.
Worth pointing out that your experience is with a model from a decade ago. The current Hero model is the 13.
Then they started this subscription thing and I was like, finally, they're going the SaaS way, they will make so much money, and they will be able to improve that camera that basically never seems to improve much version after version. I bought a bunch of put options, and I lost all my money, every time I put back some in the put options.
Now I have the insta360 go ultra and... I think go pro is going to die. It's just so good.
and... -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- got burned by it?
???
But seriously, safe to assume they meant to say calls and just accidentally wrote the wrong one.
If you just need Good, there are dozens of no-brand options on Amazon and Ali that do 4K60fps with output that is more than sufficient for any non-professional use.
I don't have a brand recommendation off hand, because the ones I've bought have been random names, but they've all been more than enough. As a reference, I've used them for capturing footage for training machine vision systems, and some general purpose marketing videos. I'm not a "creator", so I paid no attention to editing features, clip hosting, or any of those things.
Amazon sometimes gets some hate here, but I usually just buy there because the returns process is so simple. In the random case I get a product that turned out to be deceptive advertising, I drop it at Whole Foods and have a credit before I leave the parking lot. And I have the product in hand in 48 hours at most.
I have to very strongly disagree with this sentiment. I have personally tested quite a few no-name "4K 60fps" cameras from Amazon and AliExpress. Many of them upscale from 1080 - which is fine I guess - but then in 60fps will use a crop sensor and upscale from like ~640. Even with the more recognizable SJCam and Akaso brands, unless you're paying ~$200 - you're going to get upscaling, bad color science, bad image distortion. When comparing against a GoPro 5 (first 4k 60 entry) or 8 (first with USB C) the difference is astounding.
Though perhaps this is the difference between good and great that you refer to - but for me, it's certainly worth getting a used GoPro vs any of these modern cheap alternatives.
Unfortunately current new GoPros don't improve on their existing line enough to justify paying current prices. I wish I could get a new 2018 quality GoPro knockoff for <$200
ISTR GoPro moved away from Ambarella SoCs several years ago and rolled their own, but most of the other cameras are using Amba, Novatek, etc., and certainly offer great performance for a fraction of the cost of GoPro.
However once it got a bit darker, or heavy movement, the big brands left the rest in the dust pretty much.
So yeah, do a bit of research and figure out your use-case.
What about equal-or-better-than-the-same-or-similar-GoPro?
Heck in youtube videos you'll occasionally hear "for some reason my gopro is really hot and smells like burning plastic".
Happens to every big brand, really.
typical story. first move out production, loose core competency, let competitors copy it with own brands in own jurisdictions, and shut down business.
Western manufacturing can't compete with a Shenzhen. Our supply lines suck, our labour is too expensive for any kind of manual work, and we didn't bother to invest in automation as decades of outsourcing made our manufacturers focus on low-volume high-margin products.
No need to steal when our own companies willingly export core competency for a few cents of shareholder value!
You are a country. You have to decide on your country’s economic model before starting the game. Choose:
- a free market economy. Companies are unhindered by the state to make their own decisions to maximize shareholder value. Decisions therefore lean towards short term profit margins rather than long term success. Influence of the state via elected politicians on a short term is expensive but effective to ensure you are unhindered by regulation. Success here is not aligned with the long term success of the state.
- a quasi free market where there is partial state ownership and control, but also supports free market principles to encourage private investment. The state will heavily subsidize your economy and decisions can be made to prioritize long term global success rather than short term shareholder value.
- a state controlled and state owned economy. All decisions are made by committee. There are no shareholders apart from the state. Success benefits all within the state. Failure also tied directly to the state. Long term goals are preference over short term goals.
Choose carefully. Once your have made your decision the costs to change it are extremely high and will result in societal and economic collapse.
I cannot believe there are people on this planet that still believe this. Astounding.
Insta360 is the company that has essentially taken over this space.
Memory is the acute issue causing their struggles; their most recent quarter saw a gross margin of 4.5% (that's revenue minus the direct cost of producing the cameras, divided by the revenue). That's a hefty fall from their previous margin of ~31%. This contributed to their operating loss of $57M in the last 3 months.
Thag being said, they haven't had a positive quarterly operating income since the last quarter of 2022, even when the margin was higher than 4.5%. So it's not like they were succeeding before the memory crunch, just losing money slower.
Most companies just sponsor a team or something, but Red Bull has paid for the baseline infrastructure of many sports.
They don't have the type of insane cashflow that RedBull does to sponsor tons of athletes and weird events, but their video contests are kind of a big deal in the action sports community.
AKA, their Line of the Winter[1] competition for skiing, or their Best Line conest for MTB[2] that they used to run. And they're the title sponsor for the GoPro Mountain Games[3].
They're still THE action sports cameara carried in a lot of outdoor equipment stores, but the Insta360 has really dominated social media recently, and their products are currently a better value for cost/performance.
[1] https://gopro.com/en/us/awards/line-of-the-winter [2] https://www.pinkbike.com/news/enter-the-gopro-of-the-world-b... [3] https://mountaingames.com/
Redbulls gross margins are probably 90%. It’s basically just water, sugar, and caffeine sold for $3.
You can do a lot of great promotions if the cost of your product is a rounding error.
I will say the Insta 360 Go 3S is an amazing camera physically it's so small and convenient. They could improve the algo when you pan over a pavement that conglomerate pattern looks sickening when you pan.
Gopro has this cool reliable aura around them. How could they he struggling? So bizarre
As a long-time GoPro owner who recently added an Insta360 X5 to his collection, I can't really see any meaningful difference in software horribleness. They are both really really bad, with ads everywhere constantly pushing subscriptions to their cloud services.
At least with the normal cameras the software can be entirely ignored, I can take video from my Hero5 straight in to any ordinary NLE and go from there, but the 360 camera requires their software to convert from the native format to anything usable, even if I'm keeping it as 360 footage.
The worst part IMO for both is that they prioritize mobile apps over their PC software so if you want to edit on a computer like a normal reasonable person you lose features compared to idiotically doing things on a phone.
This was my main gripe, but also:
* Image stabilization (Hypersmooth Pro/ReelSteady) as a subscription feature.
* Auto-rotate and orientation lock don't work in streaming mode. (I reported this as a bug on the Hero7, was told it was being looked at, still a problem on the Hero10 when I stopped paying attention)
For what it's worth, DJI does offer desktop software for their Osmo action cams. They also have a direct NAS/cloud storage upload option from the camera, as well as allowing normal transfer over USB or by pulling the SD card.
This is my biggest issue as well. It's actually the one "real" thing I use the iPad for. It still gets the mobile app interface whilst being on a bigger screen and being almost usable.
On top of that, when GoPro first launched mobile phones generally did not have cameras capable of producing production-quality images, and especially video. 20 years later, the game is much different.
Remember the Flip video camera that was all the rage for like 2 years and then just disappeared when cellphones could shoot video? GoPro is like a rugged Flip, so it took a little longer for the world to catch up to them, but now there are lots of options, and a "cheap" sports camera that is 1/4 the price of a GoPro is good enough, even if it only lasts 1/2 as long.
Giving billions of free money to shareholders of Intel & friends is going to do absolutely nothing to change the tide. Want domestic manufacturing? Invest in building a JLCPCB alternative: automated to the fullest extent possible in order to save fractions of a cent on ops, then operated on a razor-thin margin but making up for it in volume.
Chinese people aren't the lazy dumb manual workers we have long pretended they are. After we have freely given them all of our engineering knowledge with outsourcing, they are now beating us on the free market. If we don't internalize this, stop with the silly competition-destroying tariffs, and try to compete again, we are doomed to slide into irrelevancy - and we've got only ourselves to blame.
The same thing is happening to BMW, Toyota,Mercedes...
They are just not as good. I bought GoPro10 ~5 years ago and it constantly overheats. Very unreliable. It was the first and last time I bought GoPro.
It's possible they are just poorly run, and they spend more in R&D than they recoup in revenue, but I strongly suspect they were set up to only be profitable if they sold millions of cameras per year as an attempt to maximize profits at that volume, without consideration of other scenarios.
Idk if the firmware is open source, but there's a whole SDK you can use to implement stuff like that
GoPro will be fine. They just won't be the go-to for every YouTuber any longer.
Same with surfers, or people who race cars etc. Having a physically small camera, with robust mounting and stabilization is not something a phone in a gimbal or a "real camera" can provide.
You can be more expensive if you’re better, or you can be worse if you’re cheaper, but they’re both the downsides while living purely off brand recognition.
They also blew up in a time where there wasn’t any real competition. Sony had action cameras but they were bulkier and expensive, and didn’t have the features of GoPro.
These days other brands give better quality video in better quality hardware and more functionality, for cheaper.
Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too.
People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.
A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese drone brands. And with BambuLabs (founded by ex-DJI) with 3D printers (the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa, and they’re facing extremely strong headwinds).
Legitimately better Chinese products (incredible engineering) that have massive industrial policy support, probably industrial espionage support (as in the case of DJI for certain), massive influencer marketing campaigns, and near zero cost of capital. When China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons, they are incredibly good at it. (And note it’s not US-only, China targets basically ANY brand that isn’t Chinese. China absolutely does this to Europe as well… and you can see them doing it in real-time with automotive.)
The only surprising thing to me is how people just act like it’s not happening. I guess for people who don’t have any experience working on federal government adjacent aerospace stuff, the idea of natsec considerations for IT hardware seems entirely abstract, but it’s incredibly real if you do.
Didn't they bring hundreds of millions out of poverty, and built amazing cities and facilities in the past 30 years?
>Domestic consumption in China is famously low
Compared to what, the US? Compared to China is at a historical high, isn't it? And they're doing quite well even compared to like 70% of the world and rising.
Yes, but China-bad ideology demands that we ask ”at what cost?”
China overproduced STEM grads so that their industries could hire them for pennies on the dollar. They had to withstand insane competition starting in elementary school, only to end up unemployed or doordashing.
This isn’t a PRC specific thing either, TSMC is infamous for having PhDs doing night shift lab tech work for pennies (comparatively).
So did the western world.
Ask Poland, the Baltics and East Germany if they want communism back. I'll wait. :)
I am so tired of the praise of China online while condemning the west. Worst part is you probably live in the west.
*Nono, dont reply, just downvote instead :)
What I'm tired of is zero-sum jingoistic nationalism of any kind. Can we just be happy for all of the world to prosper?
edit: I didn't downvote you but it's probably the uncalled-for cynicism.
China has built high speed rail, a quality universal health care system, and huge tech and mfg sectors. It most certainly is orders of magnitude above East Germany, and not even the same type of socialism.
There are good things about the West and good things about China, it’s not as simple as “our side good”.
They only got it good when the USA opened relations in the 80s something they never did with Soviet.
China does not have universal health care.
China helps Russia invade Ukraine. That is simple. Unless you like that too?
Also, where do people want to live? North EU. Yet when we keep our lands people call us racist.
We could, but don't expect the results to be as clear cut as you think :)
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-...
https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/10/12/many-eastern-eur...
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2009/11/02/end-of-communi...
https://brnodaily.com/2023/11/20/news/poll-17-of-czechs-say-...
https://english.radio.cz/poll-less-25-feel-better-now-under-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie
And of course 2026 China is the very opposite of some failing economy, like Eastern Bloc countries have been in 1989.
You could ban Chinese IoT devices. Or spur local industry. But we aren’t talking about the military relying on Chinese hardware or something.
It doesn’t even have to be foreign - it can just be corrupt self interest.
What other explanation is there for attacking Venezuela and Iran?
It seem to me that China choosing to subsidize industry it is not so different than the US choosing to subsidize Roads, Autos and OIL.
In both cases it does seem to work splendidly as intended.
Other than political inertia (or economic reasons far beyond my ability to fathom) there is nothing to stop the US from following suit.
I accept "free market" is a term of art probably from before global trade reality and could be narrowly redefined to mean whatever one wants (or wanted when it was coined) but in my ignorance I see it simply as free to choose actions and responses.
But I am far far away from opinions I am qualified to hold, think I will shut up now.
I do know liberal is used as a derisive term by the people we (US) are being led by which leads me to cognitive dissonance parsing your statement.
New Zealand. Meat exports and dairy.
https://www.oecd.org/en/blogs/2026/06/industrial-subsidies-h...
It's almost like you believe the US remains interested in promoting free trade.
If it did, it wouldn't be levying illegal and constantly changing import tariffs, in violation of international trade agreements that it has signed up to.
You cannot buy them because they are dumping them??????
It's the thing that happens when a foreign exporter sells goods in your country below their production cost (or far below what they're charging domestic customers). It's done to fuck up the foreign markets for those goods, or, in China's case, as a relief valve for malinvestment.
China drastically overfunds EV production. There's a whole weird story where provinces apparently competed to get slices of the EV production business, which resulted in a large number of competing firms, producing far more vehicles than the Chinese domestic market could consume.
This isn't just a US thing. Europe tariffs the heck out of these cars.
If they're being dumped there is an oversupply, and people are spoilt for choice. The market is awash with the dumped product.
Not being able to buy them is the exact reverse of that.
Your claim is that the reason people cannot buy the vehicles ISN'T because they are being dumped BUT because the government SAYS they are being dumped and has therefore actively prevented them from being sold.
The supposition is that it's an accurate claim by the governments - there are reports that the Chinese manufacturers are being restricted by their government and that there has been a period of over production, but how much of that is true and how much is propaganda is very difficult to actually ascertain.
How do we make a system everyone is to abide by when the US can just rewrite the rules when it suits? Order collapses when a huge country behaves this way.
The US chose their market (arms). The Chinese chose consumer goods. Go figure.
Not saying this is uniformly bad, because without the law the number of businesses with the ability to manufacture this stuff would trend toward zero, but it is a form of subsidy.
It winner takes all econony is literally based on destroying the competition as such.
Anything the federal government pumps money into tends not to do as well.
Stop crying already. US subsidizes a boatload of things.
I generally agree with your point about value extraction vs. re-investment.
Equities are literally investments in business. Equity is a line in the balance sheet for every corporation.
China's covert military training of Russian forces last year was personally approved by President Vladimir Putin's defence minister and directly involved at least four Russian and Chinese generals, according to two European officials and documents seen by Reuters.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-ap...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_for_Russia_in_the_Russ...
One of EUs biggest trading partners wants Ukraine to lose to Russia...
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3316875/ch...
Iran helps with Shaeed Drones as known
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136#Geran-2
With Chinese parts btw.
North Korea is in too with 10k troops at least and massive ammo. Traded for food and wheat from Ukraine.
What would the attack vector be? I’m not saying there isn’t any, I don’t know much about aerospace and this sounds interesting.
The cameras. But quite how, I don’t know.
Rather than actually getting real on China and their abuse of the postal system, it’s all about tarrifs on penguins.
Biden did far more with the chips act, but rather than building on that trunk failed to enact any meaningful change. And of course make billions in the side from bribery.
They hardly have time to compete, busy as they are with foot-shooting practice.
Stuff like this: https://sensofusion.com/dronefactory/
Edit - should add, early in the war Ukraine was crowd-sourcing drone parts from citizens with 3D printers at home. This likely grew from that.
You can rapid manufacture moulds too, cnc alu is good for 1K shots easily.
If and when AI commiditizes professional services, it would be good to have modern industry to fall back on. With 3d printing the gap isnt insurmountable yet.
However, our country is run by lawyers, not engineers, so I dont have too much hope. At least a lot of our billionaires started out as engineers...
The U.K. has just nationalised a steel plant which had been bought by China to stop it from being destroyed, and of course the economic right wing hate this as steel is far cheaper to import.
If that scam of a man wins the next election, it’ll be quite the show.
There are estimates as high as 10% of GDP, though 6-8% seem more agreed upon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit
Trump reached 55% and became president. Twice.
Pot. Kettle.
But unlike the USA, at least Britons realized Brexit was a mistake. And that Johnson was corrupt and a liar.
I am a citizen of both the UK and USA.
It is astonishing to me that Trump could be voted back in after attempting a coup.
For one, I had a GoPro whose sensor broke after about 20 minutes of recorded. I ended up getting 3 different replacements, all of which also broke. In the end I just forgot about it when my home burnt down in a wildfire. I got an Insta360 with better picture quality that's also been more reliable for a similar cost.
And I would have loved to buy a Prusa printer but I got a Bambu P1S combo for $600, an equivalent Prusa plus the $300 shipping to Canada would have been ~$2500 CAD. For making trinkets for my 3 year old son plus the few random other things I'd make it's not worth it to pay 4x the money.
Maybe it'll forever be this way due to the differences in cost of living but I do feel as though there's a million barriers to entry to building a business in North America, at least a business that's not fully online.
Neither one of those are equivalent to a P1S. They’re 2 tiers above it. Equivalent Bambu printers sell for about the same price.
I have printers from both companies. There are tradeoffs for each, but Prusa isn’t 4x more for an equivalent printer.
I did get a particularly good deal on the P1S combo apparently, the price on their website already higher than what I paid and it's significantly less in Canada than the US with exchange rate. Are they exactly equivalent, dunno, but both are the cheapest Core XY models with enclosure + colour changer that either sell.
Prusa is also cheaper in the US and EU than Canada.
In what way exactly? The camera will magically communicate to the mothership?
Sounds very similar to another US company - Garmin. They are still popular, but have been raising prices a lot every generation, because for a long time there was no real competition [1]. At this point, Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow (sometimes taking up to 10 seconds to re-render) because they have used the same CPU/MCU for multiple generations while increasing screen resolution. They also haven't really innovated a lot as of recently and are moving some new functionality behind a subscription.
This has opened a large gap for Chinese competition. Now you can get a Coros Nomad that goes head-to-head with models like the Garmin Enduro for 350 Euro. They don't have full feature parity yet, but they are so rapidly adding features that they will at some point. Also, in contrast to Garmin, they seem to be using modern microcontrollers, so panning or zooming a map is insanely fast in comparison, while still having ~20 days of battery for daily use.
[1] Of the traditional competitors, Apple Watch Ultra and Galaxy Watch Ultra have gotten closer, but are nowhere near the battery life, robustness, mapping support, mapping + workout support, etc.
I just got a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar. It does mapping, and cost me about $300 US.
You're right that it's slow due to a wimpy processor. But the processor isn't because they're too lazy to innovate, but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so that I can get a battery life of several weeks.
As a sibling commenter said, the Instinct 3 Solar only does breadcrumb navigation, it doesn't do topographic maps on the watch (there are some Connect IQ apps that can add mapping, but you don't get good integration with workouts).
I use them all the time when cycling. I often plan a route, but when some different direction looks more interesting, I can spot check whether it leads to bike paths that will eventually merge back into my grand plan, erm, route. Or sometimes even for following the route, you want to look ahead by quickly zooming out or get a lot of detail at some complex intersection, where having a full map gives you much better orientation.
Well, except on a Garmin, my Fenix 8 is often so slow that I had to pause cycling to zoom in/out (even more complicated by not being able to do gradual zooming because it does not have a crown).
Yes, I know I can also use a bike GPS or a more generic GPSr with a large screen. I have used their gpsmap line since 2010 or so and even have the gpsmap H1. But having to always carry it around when you have a break somewhere is a drag and I always have a watch on me anyway. So I primarily use the gpsmap for geocaching and switched to using a watch for other activities.
but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so that I can get a battery life of several weeks
Coros watches have several weeks of battery life and fast maps. It is laziness (or margin maximization), because they could reach the same power budget by moving to a processor that is on a smaller node.
Their bike computers have a long lasting battery and are helpful for data. But wow are they frustrating. Software update regularly loses the config, the interface is just so painful (laggy touch screen or confusing buttons). The mapping is hard to follow.
Not that Strava mapping on a phone is any better. Why can’t Strava put arrows on the direction of travel?
This has been an issue across the whole Garmin product line. E.g. the Garmin eTrex 32x from 2019 still used the same CPU as the eTrex 30 from 2011. 8 years without a CPU update. And the eTrex was already had miserably slow map rendering in 2011 with maps from that year.
I see people riding bikes worth tens of thousands regularly. They should try a top tier models and see what happens.
I don't know if there are top tier models that run on replaceable batteries you can get at any gas station.
The funniest thing is that earlier versions of the Coros even used the Garmin map format (though as many small files and not a single/small number of .img). Though they have switched to the open PMTiles format in later versions.
BTW, I had a Fenix 7x solar (before a Fenix 8 AMOLED) and it would usually 'only' last about two weeks. I think you can only reach Garmin's stated time if you disable a lot of functionality.
Garmin gets almost 30% more battery life in exchange of not being as fast (30 days)
> I think you can only reach Garmin's stated time if you disable a lot of functionality.
Turning off always-on Pulse ox gets you there. Turning everything off except telling time gets you 2.5x the battery life (69-71 days)
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/aviation/general/
https://static.garmin.com/pumac/GPS95AVD_PilotsGuide.pdf
As a motorcyclist and sailor, their hardware is second to none in terms of build quality and robustness. The ability to look down at my Zumo GPS on my motorcycle in a rain storm on a dirt road and have it respond to my wet dirty glove is a close to magic as you will get.
Then there's the watches, the Instinct range is ok but I have a button that doesn't pop back out, my wife's vivoactive suffered the well known touch failure.
However, as a UXer I will say that across all products the software interaction model sucks balls. "China" can and will produce hardware to meet a price point, its not that they can't build good products.
As soon as "China" figures out how to do good UX, the last moat western companies have will fall.
I don't know about UX, but I've had my Coros watch for a few weeks now and I didn't find it hard to understand. I think it's much easier than when I first learned to use a Fenix watch. It misses some Garmin features though that I'd really like to see like off-course rerouting. But like I said above, they have been adding features at a good pace and a drastically undercutting Garmin on price (most watches less than half the price of the closest Garmin watch).
https://youtu.be/WSMFnJnY7EA?si=NMz0wd94gM5abxyj
Apple, Google, and Amazon could all make sense. Google would see the business as an opportunity to strengthen its existing IoT portfolio. Apple an opportunity to add to its integrated consumer electronics offering. Amazon would be more a play to improve GoPro's margins. They could easily push it with prime deals, etc.
I could also see Samsung getting in.
Regardless, expect to see more integration, AI features, etc, after acquisition.
Are there any competitors on the market that also have this feature? I've looked around a few times in the past and haven't found any. Many cameras say that they have an IMU, presumably for image stabilization, but they don't seem to record or expose that data.
I had a GoPro many years ago. Eventually sold it because I needed the money for other things.
Been thinking about buying a new action camera eventually.
Got any recommendations?
The one that interests me the most of the ones I’ve seen is the Insta360 X4 Air plus an underwater case for it.
I want to be able to bring my camera swimming, bicycling, hiking, etc. And I think 360 degree cameras are pretty cool. Hopefully it’s not just a gimmick that loses its appeal after a few hours.
I’m assuming it must be possible, if the resolution is good enough, to post process a portion of each overall frame into an undistorted 1080p (or better) view of the key view of the action, but a lot of people don’t do this (perhaps it’s much more difficult or time-consuming that I’m imagining, or perhaps many viewers enjoy the distorted 360 view more than I do).
Just my two cents, YMMV, etc.
If you just want to store a snapshot of the moment as it was captured, a regular camera that you pointed in the right direction is better.
I have an insta360 X5, it's neat and there's a lot of flexibility, but it does have downsides.
The app is also a pile of crap, it's crammed full of ads, social media junk I don't want, it's slow as molasses, and the size of the app is massive.
Good to know, and reconsider!
Would you mind providing a recommendation you have first hand experience with?
What makes gopro the standard in proper productions (and science etc) is that they're so hackable with the gopro labs software. With that, all the other cameras are toys in comparison for professional usage.
Man I still can’t believe how bad the rollout of the karma was. I remember at the time everyone in my professional circles was buzzing about it. Then they started literally falling out of the sky. Feel like they never recovered
4k on a gopro 13 is far far far clearer. And the stabilization is night and day. Half my hero4 videos are mostly blurry shakes and quite jarring to watch, with a bad fov. The stabilization on modern gopros is magical. The bitrate and quality is orders of magnitude better. You can now pull good quality stills from the video if you want. Hero4 can't handle anything but perfect blue sky in the middle of the day. Etc etc
Yep, something must have gone horribly wrong with QA.
Frankly, after 4k/30 and 1080p/60, there are strong diminishing returns, because most people these days watch videos on their phones in suboptimal conditions (or older desktops that may still be on 1080p), so what are they going to do with your 5k/6k video?
Sure, you can keep doing minor improvements to sensors and optics, but for a consumer it will not justify getting a new model for $500.
Also, competing with smartphone cameras which have gotten better over the years. I bet 99% of people would not be able to tell a gopro video from a phone video.
Such as?
I've found DJI cameras also don't discharge their batteries when sitting, my gopro 11 black is somehow always dead when I grab it even after a few weeks, but my osmo action is still at ~70% after a year.
Insta360 also has some neat offerings, but their software/app is absolutely abysmal, it's crammed full of ads and takes up several GB of space. It also requires an account login.